Speaker of the Kwara State House of Assembly and former Chairman, House Committee on Justice, Dr. Ali Ahmad, spoke to Ademola Adeyemo on the benefits of his popular bill on the Administration of Criminal Justice and the leadership crisis in the National Assembly

There have been many complaints about our criminal justice system, but not much has been done. That appears to be changing given your efforts in ensuring that the Administration of Criminal Justice Bill was passed into law. What motivated you to sponsor the bill?
It is my constituency; after finishing as a politician I will come back to the practice of law. Apart from that, one will want in the next 20 to 30 years to look back and say: in my four years of legislative activity, what changes was I able to bring about? For years - before I came here I had worked in the criminal justice system, so I just sat down and said look, I have to make my contributions to improve the system.

If this bill had followed the normal process we won’t be where we are today; this bill is a 2013 bill, it got into the National Assembly at the end of January, by the end of April, it had passed second reading to public hearing. We have 2011 bills that have not even gone far; that tells you  where we are - and this is not a one page or two, three page bill,  this is a bill of 400 pages, 200 sections 42 subjects and it is not a PIB that the industry will be pushing, that has N500 million placed on it.  So, we worked very closely with the office of the Attorney-General. The bill you know has been on for years, since 2005. There were some moves and then it died, but this time we said that we don’t want it to die, and it is not even getting it to the second reading and all those readings, I want this bill assented to and that is why we moved at the speed of light. We passed it, we passed it to the Senate and then we passed it to Mr. President. If that is the only thing I achieve during my sojourn in the House I think I will be happy..

What are the advantages inherent in the bill?

Nobody should be under any illusion that once this bill is passed and signed it changes all the problems that we are having in the criminal justice system. Fundamentally, the problems that it prides itself in solving, a lot of it will rest on the drive by the Executive, especially by the Attorney General - if the AG is not interested in this bill, then forget it, even if it is assented to, it won’t work! The bill having been passed has some logistics problem, some financial, some technology, a lot of things that will make it function. Okay, we propose that the period between one adjournment and the other should be 14 days and that maximum adjournment you can have in a criminal matter is five, so how do we achieve that? All the courts must be equipped with modern technology, we should have enough courts, enough judges, so somebody should work with the statistics - how many cases do we have, how many judges, so all these must be worked out and the AG must be ready to push for it.

But first things first, we need to have the law. Then it is your duty, NBA’s duty, everybody’s duty to say that we have this law and the AG must push it. We know the problem with Nigeria is implementation, but what is everybody doing about it? My dream is to see that after the passage of this law, let the NBA, the judges, the CJN, the legislators, let everybody say look, even if the AG - I don’t mean Bello Adoke, he is very good - whoever the AG is, let us all go as a committee and meet the AG and say this is very important, this is how things are done. Everybody talks about corruption but corruption is still there, it is not about talking. We are all corrupt, including me. I can divide Nigerians into two, it’s either you are corrupt or you condone corruption, there is no number three. If we don’t, we will come back together and say look, this is a national emergency, interested people should come together and raise proper alarm and then it will be resolved. The same thing on this bill; once it is passed, all the people that are interested in the criminal justice administration and reform system - people have been saying it for years, a lot of symposia have taken place - once this thing is signed let everybody stand up and say this law must be implemented.

The official report of the 7th House of Representatives indicated that you sponsored the highest bill in the House, how did you achieve this feat?

The foundation for this groundbreaking exercise was laid in May 2013 when I brought to the notice of the House the continued existence of anachronistic laws in our statute books. Then, I particularly drew attention of my colleagues to the fact that the Supreme Court of Nigeria (Afrotec V. MIA) still held that the Sale of Goods Act of England 1893 was still applicable in Nigeria as late as year 2000.

This is so, despite the fact that the 1893 Act has been repealed and re-enacted several times by the British Parliament. Having sought for the repeal and remodeling of the colonial-era Sale of Goods Act, I was urged by the Rt. Honourable Speaker, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, to work tirelessly and see that all such embarrassing statutes are expunged from our law books. The 10 bills are a product of this exercise. Apart from the National Hospital Bill, the others that were worked on by the House may be classified into three. The first are laws that apply to Nigeria since the colonial era and which have overstayed their usefulness.

These are the Maintenance Orders Act (meant for registration of regional courts), the Loan Act. Others are military-era laws that have become moribund like the Family Economic Advancement Programme Act, the Family Support Trust Fund Act, and the People’s Bank of Nigeria Act. Other anachronistic laws expunged from our law books are the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank Act, the Nigerian Bank for Commerce and Industry Act (replaced by the Bank of Industry Act), National Commission for Rehabilitation Act (meant for internally displaced people), and Federal Savings Bank Act.”

Some people were wondering why you decided to come back home to contest the House of Assembly election when you were already a federal legislator?

Remember it was my people that sent me to the House of Representatives and they said I have done well and now requested that I should come back home to serve them in another capacity. I had no choice that to obey them and here I am still serving them to the best of my ability and my joy is that they are satisfied with my contributions. Once it is service for the people, we should be ready to serve in any capacity. I am happy doing that.

It is believed that members of the House of Assembly are in the pockets of the state governors
That is not true, here in Kwara State, there is a mutual relationship between the executive and the legislature and one is not in the pocket of another, we have been performing our legislative duties without any harassment from the executive. Governor Ahmed is a democrat, he respects the legislators and we get our dues and we are working under the right atmosphere. Nobody is gagging us and we will not confront the executive unnecessarily. We are partners in the progress of the state


Plea bargaining is not a concept that has been accepted by the generality of the people, now that it is going to be part of our law, are you convinced that we need it and we should legalise it?

I have been involved in two public hearings and debates and they came out in favour of it. If anybody reads those sections, the chapter on plea bargaining, 270-285 or so, you cannot but agree with it. A lot of people who disagree with plea bargaining have not read those sections; once you give it to them, they read it and say: Okay, why don’t you do this? That was my impression at the public hearing. Only ICPC objected to it, and at the Law Reform Commission, they did a conference yesterday the report I am getting, even though they have not submitted a formal report, is that only the ICPC is objecting, but everybody else, all the judges, all the heads of court, from the CJN, Court of Appeal, Chief Justices of FCT, Federal High Court and Industrial Court, all of them are in support.

In 2012, when the Halliburton matter came up, we sat down with the AG and said let it be the last plea bargaining that you would do in Nigeria until we have reliable rules, verifiable rules, that everybody can look at and say you followed the rules. Fortunately, this bill came and everything was there. The problem with plea bargaining is ad-hoc plea bargaining; you will always have problems with ad-hoc plea bargaining. What we have been doing in Nigeria is ad-hoc plea bargaining, that is why we have been having problems and we will continue to have problems. But for now once this bill is passed it will no longer be ad-hoc plea bargaining, it is proper plea bargaining and you cannot but accept it because it lays down the rules, the steps, that you as a prosecutor, as an accused, as a judge and everybody will follow and you should do it in the interest of the public.

You have to convince everybody that what you are doing is in the interest of the public. If anybody says he is against plea bargaining let him read those sections, we will be on the same page. Plea bargaining should apply to all offences where it is applicable, I want people to first read those 15 sections regarding plea bargaining and then come in and say despite this, it should be restricted to, or it should be involved with, sexual offences, financial crimes, etc. Let me take the general rules of plea bargaining, why for God’s sake are we regulating plea bargaining? The issue we set out to address in this bill is about reforming the delay in criminal justice, we want speedy dispensation of criminal justice, that is the fundamental objective, so if plea bargaining is going to assist in that direction, why not.

Now in our prisons, we have over 35,000 Nigerians, awaiting trial, some of them justifiably so. If you are a policeman you will say no way, those people can’t be released, because you have some evidence that the person committed the offence, but because the standard of proof is so high they cannot secure conviction, the best option is to keep the gentleman there for five years, 10 years, 15 years. This is the reality in Nigeria, so look at those 35,000 Nigerians, maybe someone committed a sexual offence and maybe the family says we don’t want this case to go on, as usual with sexual offences.

The only option left for police is to keep him locked up, so if plea bargaining becomes part of our law, the policeman, the investigator, the prosecutor will now meet him, that look, we have evidence, but we cannot secure conviction because there is no medical record, because the witness is not coming forward, but if you plead guilty, because we know you did it, instead of giving you 15 years, we will give you five years and you will go. If the man agrees - there is no compulsion - you give him five years and if he has served the five years he has a criminal record. Mind it, he must be convicted - plea bargaining doesn’t mean that he should go free - so his record is dented. And now we have a central registry, all criminals, all the people convicted will be there, we have the records for him. That is number one dent on his record. Secondly, he will serve his prison term for 5 years, so for him it is justice, for the system it is justice.

People should read all those things before they now say it shouldn’t apply to this or that. It should apply to every crime except somebody can convince me that these sections, if applied to this scenario, would not work. 90 per cent of federal cases in the USA are negotiated through plea bargaining, because even in the US they have bigger problems against the application of plea bargaining than Nigeria. In Nigeria, we don't have much inhibition to make plea-bargaining inapplicable.  In the US they have to battle with the issue of constitutional provision that every criminal trial should be by grand jury; that is expensive and time consuming, so they can’t afford it. And they can’t amend the constitution, so what is the leeway? Plea bargaining.

The US with all their investigative powers, if they cannot go on, they don’t want to go by grand jury, they now call you, that you have to plea bargain, this is the evidence and you will see it, if you go to trial, you will lose. Instead of you going into trial, instead of the state spending a lot of money and wasting the court’s time, you plea bargain. Instead of 10 years, you get five years, but you refund everything. So why not Nigeria?

There have been calls for the merging of ICPC, EFCC. Do you support this call?
The way those two agencies are operating is a disservice to Nigeria. The fundamental issue is this: during Obasanjo, ICPC was enacted in 2000, EFCC I think in 2004. ICPC is for corrupt practices, it is very wide. EFCC is narrow; it is for financial crimes, bank fraud, credit card fraud, etc. Because Obasanjo strengthened EFCC and EFCC became very powerful, you now have that hangover up till the present day. People who should be tried under ICPC Act, once you arrest them you ask the EFCC -which is to me like an attack dog - to go after them. When EFCC goes after them and does all the brigandage and now goes to the hallowed chambers of the court, it is confronted with reality. Its substantive provisions do not support the prosecution. We know that in Nigeria we have this interagency rivalry, so what they do is now to go to the penal code, a 100 year old law, because they cannot use the ICPC section. The question will now arise: why is ICPC not prosecuting? These are the fundamental issues.
From investigation, ICPC should come in. They have enough laws to prosecute. EFCC is not important. I said it when I was AG. The President has said it. The fundamental problem of Nigeria is corruption. The most corrupt people in Nigeria are civil servants. The President said it, everybody knows it. How many politicians? I can show you the budget, they bury N5 million all over, by the time you add it, it will be about N500 million. ICPC is there and we are pushing EFCC. The prosecutor shouldn’t have prosecuted under the Penal Code. Why Penal Code? Penal Code that allows you to impose a fine of N150 for somebody who stole N1 billion, when we have ICPC law that doesn’t even have option of fine?

What of the problem of prisons congestion?
While in the House, I undertook a tour of all the existing prison services across the country to ascertain the condition of prisoners. I then mapped out a plan to decongest the prisons, give the structures a facelift, and change the conditions of the prisoners with the aim of making them better persons at the end of their jail terms. The tour assisted me to set a new agenda for the prison services in the country.  Administration of Criminal Justice Bill is meant to change the condition of the prisons and tackle the awaiting trial syndrome in the country. It has up to 500 clauses and several schedules and has been described as a revolution in the justice sector for its innovative provisions. The Administration of Criminal Justice Bill was passed by the House in December 2013, supported by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Attorney General of the Federation, and the legislature.

The Administration of Criminal Justice Bill aims, among others, seeks to address the issue of prison congestion through a robust system for reporting detentions and a mandatory monthly visit of detention facilities by magistrates. Other measures include limiting the number of adjournments and moderating rules on plea bargain and compensation or restitution to victims of crimes.

When the Administration of Criminal Justice Bill becomes implementable, it is expected that criminal trials that hitherto lasted about 12 years would no longer take more than a few months to a year or two to conclude.